Because we don't understand the brain very well we're constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. (What else could it be?) And I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electromagnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and now, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.
-John R. Searle, philosophy professor (b. 1932)
Degsy writes:Degsy says:”The brain looks like a writing, inviting us to read it, and yet it isn’t a writing.”Wittgenstein
Beep.
Originally posted by anonymous:Degsy says:”The brain looks like a writing, inviting us to read it, and yet it isn’t a writing.”Wittgenstein Mine certainly isn’t writing at the moment. Too crammed with other things. Originally posted by serenard:Beep.Beep beep.
To me the whole point of the quote is that the brain is not like a mechanical system, which just goes to show how interpretations vary.
Todd writes:It seems to me the obvious reply is that the brain really IS like all of those things, and any number of other illustrative examples one might dream up, with varying degrees of similarity. After all, “the brain is like a switchboard/telegraph/computer” means little more than “the brain is a mechanical system.” No metaphor is perfect; that’s actually the whole point of a metaphor, in a way.Then again, I never liked Searle, so meh.
To put it another way, all the mechanical systems mentioned are inventions of the brain, and in that way resemble it. But the brain contains those systems. Why limit the brain to something it is larger than and contains?